by Mason Sabre
Jason must have felt whatever it was too because he shifted in his seat and leant in closer to the dash. He focused on the house before them. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
A slight pause, then Jason drummed his fingers across the plastic. “I’ve not had good experiences with the MacDonalds. His father anyway.”
“No one has a good experience with Trevor, but he’s gone now.”
“No. I know, but …” He bit his bottom lip. A movement that was distracting and sexy … actually, it was distracting because it was sexy.
“But?” She cleared her throat, again.
He sighed. “I had a friend once. We were fifteen. We went to the pack run and followed them because we weren’t pack and weren’t meant to be there, but we wanted to see what it was they did.” Jason faced her. He met her eyes with his … that gaze again, the one that cut so deeply into her, so wolf … so predatory. “You know? Like spying on the royal family and seeing why they’re different?”
Crystal nodded. Heat ran under her skin in a wave of lava that flushed her face. She tensed and dug her nails into the palms of her hands and hoped to god he didn’t hear the little squeak that escaped her. “How the other half live?”
“Exactly. We weren’t doing anything bad. Just running behind them, watching. His father caught a whiff of us and they caught us.” He nodded towards Cade’s house. “They used us instead of the deer they were hunting. We had to run, into the woods, a whole pack of wolves chasing us. Have you ever heard the sound someone makes when they are being ripped apart while they’re still alive? I just …” He gave himself a moment to suck in a breath, and she watched him, unable to tear her gaze away. She so desperately wanted to reach out and sooth the pain that was so evident. He was so perfectly male, so beautiful, and so hurt. “Do you know what it is like to hear that, and be thankful it wasn’t you?” The last part was a whispered confession.
A tight fist clenched around her own heart, and she did let herself reach for him. “Jason …”
“After, his father and some of the other wolves grabbed me. His father told me I was only alive because they allowed it, and I should be grateful. He told me to remember this the next time I wanted to piss around on Society soil. Then they dumped me, unconscious, in one of the underground holes.”
“I’m sorry.” Crystal bowed her head as the words came out, words that felt like they fell short of any kind of comfort. Sorry wasn’t good enough. Sorry would never be good enough. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to hear that, or see it. It showed her just how strong he was, though, even if he probably didn’t think so himself. “You went to Cade,” she said after a moment, whispering and airing on the side of caution. “For Shayla.”
Jason leant back in his seat again and rested his hands on his legs. He twisted his fingers together and spun a ring he had around his right thumb. Whether it was absently, or with thoughts in his head, Crystal wasn't sure, but she didn't think it mattered. She just needed to find that edge to push him. “Shayla was the one who helped me back then. I owed it to her.” He met Crystal’s gaze again, but the intensity of the blue in his eyes had lessoned, making him look sadder. “She used to be Society. I thought maybe that would help. I was desperate. He turned me away and sent me to Raven”
At his admission, Crystal blew out a breath and relaxed a little into her seat. “I don’t know this MacDonald guy so much, but I do know that he is a friend of Raven’s. If you knew Raven …” She shook her head. “Raven doesn’t trust a lot of people, believe me. He doesn’t care if they are Society or Stray, or bloody alien.” A pause. “Cade can’t be like his father. I promise. And his father … Trevor?” She moved, putting her body in an open position. “Cade killed him. Remember that. It takes something for a man to take the life of his own father.”
“Perhaps the evil that ran through his father, has manifested in him?”
“Do you believe that? Truly? Does your wolf?” Wolves were like little lie detectors, all shifters were in her experience. Not always accurate, but they had a way to know things. Like all animals she guessed. Animals seemed to be the better judge of people. “The worst he can do is tell us to get lost. Come on.”
She didn’t give him time to protest about it, instead, she got out of the car and walked far enough away to wait so he had to come. And he stared at her with that sexy little frown across his face. She made herself turn her back on it.
Cade’s house was at the end of the lane. His car was parked in his driveway, and they had to squeeze around it to get to the front door. Most shifters she knew used their back doors for friends, and family. She was neither. She remembered Cade when he had been a child. Him and his mate … she wasn’t so sure of his name. He’d died if she remembered rightly. Maybe that would make him more empathetic to Shayla’s needs. Society or not.
“Are you ready?” she asked Jason. He was standing behind her like a ball of tension ready to go off. The vibes came from him as little nips of nervous energy like mites biting at her skin. Ever since she had touched him at Shayla’s apartment, she could read him, feel him. He was a beacon somewhere. Someone had switched on her familiar, and now she didn’t have a clue how to turn it off again. She tried not to think about what would happen when he was gone, when all of this was over, and he would go back to where he had come from and she’d be alone.
“Maybe I should have stayed in the car.”
He stepped back, she grabbed his sleeve. “We’re here now.” The door in front of her was large, detailed. Someone had chiselled the design into it, but then it didn’t match on either side. That gave it some character, but it spoke of the person who had created it. A lot of hours had gone into that door—they were thorough, meticulous, but above all, caring. She reached for the knocker, knocked and waited.
Seconds later there was a movement on the other side. Feet shuffled, and a door opened, followed by a chain. “One second,” a deep male voice called from the other side. Then the loud clang of a bolt being moved sounded out, and the door opened.
Crystal didn’t expect what she saw … a man … a young man perhaps, not over his thirtieth birthday, yet. Tired, though. He had a small bundle pressed to him, his hand protectively holding her, a hand gripping her leg, holding her in place as she straddled the side of his ribs. She had his eyes, bright, blue and curious. She had the same hair colouring as him too, with little curls at the nape of her neck. She gave Crystal the biggest of smiles. “Can I help you?”
“Cade MacDonald?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“My name is Crystal, and I—”
“Witch,” he said. His tone didn’t hold offence when he said it, but it still made the hair on the back of her neck spike. Shifters often regarded themselves as the top of the food chain when it came to Others, and they put witches somewhere close to the bottom.
“Yes.” She meant to say it with confidence, but her word faded out and she cleared her throat. “Society. This is Jason.”
“A wolf,” Cade said, glancing over her shoulder to him. He was standing with his hands in his pockets again, but his shoulders were strong, his back straight. He was standing tall in the face of a more powerful wolf, but it was a respectful stance of a wolf to an alpha. “You came here last night,” Cade said. “To ask me …”
“Yes.”
“We’d like to talk to you,” Crystal said, cutting in before Cade could turn them away. He would say they were Strays and tell them to get lost, although, from his demeanour, she didn’t pick up that vibe from him. Actually, what she could read from him was a sadness that filled every pore. It went all the way to his soul and cloaked him like silk. She wanted to hug him.
Damn wolves.
“Come in,” he said. “Amara needs feeding, and it’s cold.” He kicked the door open a little more and stepped back to allow Crystal and Jason to enter. Crystal went first, and Jason stayed at the step until Cade nodded for him to come in too.
“Thank you,” Jason said, bowing h
is head to the higher wolf and putting it at a level that his head was below Cade's. That was what wolves did. It was like offering protection to the alpha wolf … covering their throats, their power.
“Just in here,” Cade said, indicating to a room just off the hallway. “Close the door behind you quietly. My wife is sleeping.”
They followed Cade into a lounge. There were a couple of sofas, and shelves lined with more books than anyone would be able to read in their entire lifetime. Cade pointed at the sofa with its back to the window.
“How old is she?” Crystal asked as she and Jason took a seat together.
“Three months. She needs feeding, so you’ll have to excuse me while I do that.” He already had the bottle warmed and on the small table next to where he sat. He picked it up, bit at the lid to pull it off, and then settled back with his daughter nestled in the crook of his arm, ready for her bottle. “What is it that I can help you with? The girl you asked me about last night?”
“Shayla,” Jason said, then he went quiet and pulled himself back, like he had lost his voice, his confidence. Couldn’t he see that Cade was one of the good guys? He had let them into his home. Let them be in the same room as his cub. That was not the move of a man who was about to do something terrible.
“His sister,” Crystal added.
“Pack sister.”
“Pack?” Cade asked, raising a brow.
“Yes, sir. I …” He stopped as if he was waiting for the reprimand and a reminder of having a pack and being Stray, but none came.
“What about her?” Cade leant back even more, and then raised his leg, so he could rest his ankle across his other knee. The baby in his arms suckled furiously on the bottle her dad offered. She stopped only when the teat needed air to deliver her more food.
“She’s missing.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of bottles that they had got at the apartment. “We found these.”
“She wasn’t taking them, though,” Crystal added, feeling like she owed it to Jason now to understand that, and to show that she did; she believed him.
Cade tucked the bottom of the baby’s bottle under his chin to hold it in place for Amara while she drank, and then he held his hand out towards Jason. “May I?” Jason gave him one of the bottles and Cade held it to the light, examining it. He was nodding as he did that. “I’ve seen these before. Nasty stuff, too. Usually the Human taking it doesn’t survive, or not for long, anyway.”
“Humans?”
Cade handed the bottle back to Jason, then resumed holding his daughter’s bottle. “They come in colours, right?”
“Yes. They mean something?” Crystal wasn’t so sure. She knew the logo, but …
“I don’t know what each colour means exactly. As far as we know at DSA, the people who make these change it. I guess it keeps us from knowing what they’re doing. She is involved in this?”
“No,” both Crystal and Jason answered together. “She’d never take drugs,” Jason added.
Cade shook his head. “These drugs aren’t taken by shifters. Maybe witches, no offence.” He glanced at Crystal a second. “But not shifters, or vampires. Anything with enhanced abilities wouldn’t need these. Someone else she knew?”
“Just David, her boyfriend. Well, he stayed there, not lived really. But he was wolf too. I don’t know what pack. His scent was kind of off.”
“But it was wolf?” Crystal asked.
Jason shrugged. “Maybe.”
It was there. Whatever the answer was, it was there and staring at her and she couldn’t bloody see it. She took one of the bottles off Jason and rolled it in the palm of her hand as if staring intently at it would grace her with some answers. Of course, none came. “What if he was tiger? Or bear or something?” she said, aiming her question at Cade. “If he took this stuff, maybe he was a different shifter? Or maybe it made him a shifter?”
“No,” Cade said, shaking his head. “It wouldn’t matter. These drugs don’t give a person the animal, it’s the sight, the hearing, the strength. There’s no reason a shifter would take this because we get all that with our animals. And he couldn’t become a shifter from it. It isn’t something we can fake or give. Only a true bite and infection can cause the animal. These drugs, they are kind of dead, the infection has to be live. I know someone who was bitten. He’d been Human and was bitten by a wolf. It took a while for his shift to come in, his first real one. This is why bitten shifters die, because the animal, in my friends case, a wolf, it is like a baby growing inside. Like Amara here, when her mother was pregnant, she needed everything from her mother’s body. Same with a newly bitten shifter. The animal can only grow from its hosts’ resources. It has to grow inside the host and it will take all the energy to do that. Sometimes they’ll shift a couple of times at the start. Mostly this is so they can feed the way is needed, but ultimately, it will drain the host to death. When someone is bitten, they have to develop new muscles, new bones in places they’d not have them. Mostly, it is too much on fragile Human bodies, and it kills them. These drugs … A woman couldn’t get pregnant using semen that had been jarred for a week. All these drugs do is give the taker a short blast of the enhancements. Better hearing, better sight.”
Jason stared at Cade the whole time, listening intently and nodding at what the alpha wolf had to say. Crystal just wanted to inch closer, and she almost cursed herself for sitting with a gap between them. “We can tell what an Other is by scent?” Jason said. “What about when Humans take these? Would they smell Human, or whatever?”
Cade was quiet for a moment. The only sound in the room was that of the soft breathing of Amara. She was asleep, absently sucking on her bottle. “Maybe. But you said he smelt, off?”
“Yes,” Jason said. “He smelt like wolf, but I don’t know …” he turned to Crystal. “We can scent pack. Like now, I can scent Cade and the baby and where they belong.”
“It’s our tracer,” Cade added.
Wolf lessons. Crystal supposed it made sense. But that was a whole load of smelling. “So David could have been Human pretending to be wolf? What about when the shift came about? How’d he get over that?”
“I’ve never seen him shift,” Jason admitted. “He never came with us. I just assumed he ran with his people, or whatever.”
They let that statement hang in the air a moment as Cade took the bottle from the sleeping baby’s mouth. Her eyes opened a second, and he froze with the bottle mid-air, ready. He had the look of parental fear across, and the plea in his expression for her to go back to sleep. She did. She sucked on the non-existent bottle a couple of times, yawned and then turned her head into her father’s chest. It was like the room breathed.
With her still in his arms, he reached to the side table and grabbed a small pad of paper and a pen, then he wrote something. “A few years ago, we came across this place. It’s an old waterwheel and dock. They had the Norton label and similar images to your bottles. You know Norton, right?”
Norton … that name was like spit to anyone who was Other. The man was an idiot, a rich and powerful idiot who wanted all Others eradicated. “Yes.”
“It’s all linked to something called the Human Project. There were bodies found, a couple of Strays. They’re long gone from there, but I don’t know … maybe you can find something. A lot of the leads we had went dry long ago.”
“What happened to the Strays you found,” Jason asked.
Cade stopped writing. “They’re safe.” And that was it, all he gave. “There is another address too, well two actually. I don’t know more than that really, but I can tell you. It’s something terrible. I’m just sorry I can’t be more help.”
“No,” Crystal said. “You’ve been a lot of help, thank you.” She took the paper from him and then smiled down at the baby in his arms. “So perfect when they’re this small, right? No idea what evil goes on in the world around them.”
Cade ran a thumb across the little knuckles of her hand. “I know. Almost makes it too frig
htening to let them grow up,” he said as if he had read her mind.
“She’ll be giving you hell in no time,” Crystal laughed. “Thank you.” She offered out her hand to him to shake. He took it. She wasn’t in a habit of touching wolves, but damn, it seemed like her thing that night.
“Wow,” she said when nothing happened, no spark, no nearly fainting … not a thing.
Cade tilted his head to one side, in question.
“Nothing,” she said. And that was it … Only Jason had that affect. She was in some deep shit.
Chapter 6
The house Cade had told them about was still there, standing as an ugly sore amidst the most beautiful of scenery. It was part derelict now of course. Another abandoned building by the Humans. They were nothing but a swarm of termites coming in, devouring everything and then leaving nothing but dry and brittle husks of buildings. It was hard these days to find an area that didn’t have such properties. Maybe one day that would be all that was left. They would do that to the earth too … they’d already started. Either that, or they would just end up killing each other. There was an organisation that believed Others were born … created even, by something higher, something that knew what was coming. Not through malevolence like Humans often claimed with their ‘Others are the font of all evil’ sermons, but something more powerful. The world was changing, and people needed to evolve … Others were that evolution, whether Humans liked it or not.
Was it such a coincidence that witches could see the hidden puzzles in the world? They could find the very tools that mother nature had to offer and use them. Or what about the fae? They were so similar to witches, but their powers were linked to the elements of the earth. Others spun the world around in the right direction. It couldn't just be happenstance that every species of Other that existed had a place and a purpose … even those who the Humans said were un-natural. One day, every living thing would be forced to live in dark caverns within the earth and witches would be needed to source the very resources from inside them it to enable everyone to live. The undead would walk topside, shifters would hunt, scavenge. Their honed senses enabled them to protect. Humans were wrong with the way they segregated everyone and everything. Fear … it made them weak and fucking stupid. It would be their ending too.
